SARASOTA (March 31, 2015) – Sarasota Memorial has been repeatedly recognized among the nation’s 50 best hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. Now, the community owned health system is being lauded for its skilled nursing and rehab center.

Sarasota Memorial Nursing & Rehab Center ranked among U.S. News’ “Best Nursing Homes” in 2015. This month's report highlights the top nursing homes in every state and nearly 100 major metropolitan areas. The ratings cover almost 16,000 nursing homes nationwide.

Sarasota Memorial has been providing post-acute rehabilitation and skilled nursing services at Sarasota Memorial Skilled Nursing & Rehab Center on Clark Road for more than 20 years. The skilled rehab facility offers a variety of short-term, post-hospital and long-term care programs to meet individual patient’s skilled nursing and rehabilitation needs. In addition to a wide range of medical specialties, it is one of the few skilled nursing facilities equipped in the nation with a special 12-bed unit and respiratory therapy dedicated to ventilator and tracheostomy residents admitted for rehabilitation. Approximately 200 staff members make up its multi-disciplinary team and care for 120 residents around the clock, 365 days a year.

“Achieving this award is a source of pride for our entire team, but what matters most to us is how our residents feel about the care they receive,” said Maria DeCarlo, executive director of rehabilitation services at Sarasota Memorial. “We are committed to delivering the highest quality care, in the most comfortable and healing environment possible.”

Now in its seventh year, Best Nursing Homes is designed to help the several million Americans who will spend at least some time in a nursing home in 2015 rehabbing after a hospital stay or as long-term residents. On a given day, 1.4 million people, most of them 65 and older, live in nursing homes.

“Finding the right place for an elderly loved one is a challenge millions of Americans face each year,” says Brian Kelly, editor and chief content officer of U.S. News. "We hope our Best Nursing Homes ratings, advice and tools help them navigate this important decision."

Best Nursing Homes provides data and information on care, safety, health inspections, staffing and more for virtually all U.S. nursing homes. A searchable database lets users find highly rated nursing homes by distance as well as by location. Each facility's profile displays health and fire safety violations, performance in important clinical categories and how much time nursing staff spends with residents.

But the ratings are just a starting point. Best Nursing Homes offers advice on questions to ask and red flags to watch for when choosing a home as well as information on the cost of nursing home care.

To create Best Nursing Homes 2015, U.S. News drew on data from Nursing Home Compare, a program run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that sets and enforces standards for nursing homes. U.S. News awarded a "Best Nursing Homes" designation to facilities that earned the agency's highest overall rating of five stars.

Each nursing home receives an overall rating of one to five stars, based on its number of stars in three categories: state-conducted health inspections, how much time nurses spend with residents and the quality of medical care. Only nursing homes that received an overall rating of 5 stars as of February 19, 2015, receive the 2015 quality designation.

About Sarasota Memorial’s U.S. News & World Report Rankings U.S. News & World Report is a digital news and information company that empowers people to make better, more informed decisions about important issues affecting their lives. In U.S. News’ 2014-15 Best Hospitals rankings, Sarasota Memorial rose in the rankings, to #30 nationally in Gynecology care (up from #48 last year). It also was recognized nationally as a “high performing” hospital in eight specialties:

Cancer (new this year)

Diabetes & Endocrinology

Gastroenterology & GI Surgery

Geriatrics

Nephrology

Orthopedics

Pulmonology

Urology (new this year)

On a state and metropolitan level, U.S. News ranked Sarasota Memorial #1 in South Florida, #1 in the Sarasota-Venice-North Port-Bradenton region and #5 (up from #6 in 2013) among all 265 Florida hospitals for overall care.

About Sarasota Memorial
Sarasota Memorial Health Care System is a regional referral center offering Southwest Florida’s greatest breadth and depth of inpatient, outpatient and extended care services, with more than 800,000 patient visits a year. Sarasota Memorial’s 819-bed acute care hospital has been recognized repeatedly as one of the nation’s largest, safest and best, with superior patient outcomes and a complete continuum of outpatient services– from urgent care clinics and physician groups, laboratory and diagnostic imaging centers, to home health and skilled nursing & rehabilitation. Sarasota Memorial is the only hospital in the Suncoast region (Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte and DeSoto counties) ever to rank in U.S. News’ “Best Hospitals” list.